From the monthly archives: April 2010
There’s nothing quite as handy as a truck box for storing that extra stuff you need to carry but don’t want stuffed into the already-tiny cab area. But sometimes the normal front-positioned box gets in the way of, say, a dirt-bike mount — or anything else long enough to require the entire bed length. But fear not: There are other options, like this wheel-well box from Craftsman.
For the last few years I’ve been giving the guys at Stanley a hard time about tapes every chance I got. My favorite was the little 12’ tape that came with a pack of screwdrivers and they didn’t sell it outside of that. Then they came out with “Blade Armor” but didn’t make one in the form factor I wanted. In true Toolmonger style I gave them endless crap about it. With the addition of the 33-413 Tylon 12’ tape it seems I now have nothing to complain about.
Stanley put their famous nylon coating on a thin 12’ tape that features a lock, rubber molding, and a day-glo green body. It’s just about everything I could ask for in a tape, but just to shut up the whiners like me they made it a touch smaller as well — I bought five on the spot. I had to; it’s just about as flawless a tool for my shop applications as anyone could come. I don’t do any work over 10′ and I deal with a lot of finished surfaces that larger tapes blemish.
We’ve touted code readers before. If you own an OBD-II-equipped (read: post-1996) vehicle, these little black boxes serve as the skeleton key to the check engine light (CEL) cellar door. But this weekend I was patching my F150 back together after getting it stuck in a friend’s lake of a back yard, and I discovered another great reason to own a code reader: the pre-emissions check.
Julie at The Gadgeteer reports on a new multi-tool that you can configure yourself. The Switch set from Quirky comes in a case with two exterior body covers, two slotted axle caps (removable with a quarter), three interior axle assemblies, and 18 tool attachments. You pick the tool attachments you want and assemble them on the appropriately-sized axle: small for 2—6 tools, medium for 4—10 tools, and large for 7—13 tools, as shown below.
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Crank action screwdrivers pre-date cordless drivers, but they are still handy enough to be useful today. Trying to make their Rapi-Driv screwdrivers more functional, Klein now sells a version with interchangeable tips. They may not have been the first company to stick an interchangeable bit holder on their crank action screwdriver, but theirs is the only version I could find.
Often I spend the time before my morning coffee kicks in browsing the Harbor Freight website. (Think of it as a shorter, more-virtual version of the classic Saturday morning Harbor Freight trip, but with less danger of returning home with a $35 trunk-full of cheap tools.) This morning I came across the above pictured item: a set of mittens.
Back in December I posted about the crib I was making for my young’n. Just after that a time warp occurred that I am just coming out of now. However, one of the projects I did mange to work to completion is my daughter’s shiny new crib. Let me begin by saying anyone who tells you building a crib is a piece of cake is either a liar or selling something. I had lots of issues, but in the end it came out great. So, without further delay, here’s part 2 of the crib build and how it went down.
Due to other time-sucks that happened outside of the shop I wasn’t able to document this project as well as we normally would, but I’ll hit the highlights and low points.
In the last post I left off after just having built the major sections for the end pieces. Now it was time to start assembling them. I needed several things from these ends. Not only would the entire rest of the crib be built to hook to these pieces, but I would need them to look good and provide a mechanical lock as well as a hardware lock in order to feel good about youngster sleeping in it. So as I do with many problems, I solved this issue with 3/4 trim.
Forget the flying motorcycle (e.g., TM 1/7/10): those things are dangerous. Strap one of these to your back instead, and you’re off. Just avoid that idiot neighbor of yours who’s always texting while flying, and you’ll be fine.
The Martin Jetpack, with a structure of a carbon fiber composite, weighs around 250 lbs. Its 200-hp, 2L, V4 two-stroke engine powers twin carbon/Kevlar rotors that provide 600+ lbs of thrust. At its maximum speed of 63 mph, it has a range of 31.5 miles. Its estimated maximum hover is 8,000 ft.
Sure, this wouldn’t be news on most sites. But one thing about being a Toolmonger is that we love any tool news, no matter how minor. And on that note: It looks like Makita updated their palm sander a little bit.
For the most part, it’s the same as the previous model, with all the top forty hits: sealed bearings, through-the-pad dust collection, a 4,000 to 12,000 RPM variable speed control, a big front handle, and rubberized grips. But this model includes an “improved pad control system” and re-engineered pad brake to prevent the gouging that can bite you (or your project) in the ass on start-up or shut-down.
Have you ever dropped your keys in the lake? Well neither have I, but the thought of accidentally dropping my truck keys in the lake has crossed my mind when I’m fishing 50 miles from the nearest cell tower. There are floating key fobs, floating flashlights, probably even floating fob flashlights, but do any of them automatically turn on when they fall in the water? Coleman’s marine key fobs does.
TM on Flickr
![RICH-CON No. 2 [shows Logo on side of plane]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7236/7230831382_240f44f2f4_s.jpg)
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